The first set of the land laws were enacted in 2012 in line with the timelines outlined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010. In keeping with the spirit of the constitution, the Land Act, Land Registration Act and the national Land Commission Act respond to the requirements of Articles 60, 61, 62, 67 & 68 of the Constitution. The National Land Policy, which was passed as Sessional Paper No. 3 of 2009, arrived earlier than the Constitution, with some radical proposals on the land Management.

Illegal and irregular allocations of public land were a common feature of the Moi regime and perhaps it’s most pervasive corrupt practice. The Ndung’u Report as well as various reports of the Public Investment Committee details numerous cases of public land illegal allocated to individuals and companies in total disregard of the law and public interest. Most allocations were made to politically correct individuals without justification and resulted in individuals being unjustly enriched at great cost to the people of Kenya.

Conventional notions of the ‘land parcel’ have been extended: previously unrecognized tenures including customary, nomadic, or communal interests are now incorporated into the concept. Technical tools including the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) enable these new understandings to be operationalized in land administration systems. The nomadic pastoralists of Kenya’s dry land regions illustrate where these new approaches can be applied.

The promulgation of the Kenyan Constitution 2010 brought into place concerns about the urgency for land reform. Land reforms hold the key to solving some of Kenya’s greatest challenges such as landlessness, community cohesion, food security and sustainable development. Land reforms lie at the heart of the work of the National Land Commission (NLC) and Kituo cha Sheria and they are also at the heart of many Kenyan communities who live, work and rely on land. Information contained in the book goes a long way in educating these communities about their land rights.

Ill advised, uncoordinated, and badly planned interventions have been blamed for continuing poverty and food insecurity in rangelands. Water interventions in particular have had negative impacts. Not only have these interventions failed to improve the livelihoods of people living there, but in many cases they have served to undermine them and the environment on which they depend. Rangeland development interventions have been sectoral in their approach.

This Issue Paper No.3 is part of the series Making Rangelands Secure, a learning initiative supported by ILC, IFAD, RECONCILE, IUCN-WISP and Procasur. The Making Rangelands Secure Initiative has been established by a group of organisations seeking to improve security of rights to rangelands. The initiative seeks to identify, communicate and build good practice on making rangelands secure for local rangeland users. 

This report highlights some of the human rights challenges which the Indigenous peoples in Tanzania, particularly Maasai pastoralists, are facing. It also proposes some areas of improvement in order to make Tanzania a better place for everyone, including indigenous pastoralists. It should be noted that Tanzania has more than 120 different ethnic groups, which are Bantu-speaking, Nilo-hamitic (including the Maasai) and Cushitic.

The first phase of the “Water for Livestock in Isiolo and Garissa Counties, Kenya — Enhancing water resource and rangeland management community capacity through training and strategic water development” has been implemented in in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya by IUCN, the Kenya Red Cross Society, and Adeso, with the support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. The overall objective of the pilot phase of the project was to improve livelihoods and resilience against drought for targeted communities in North Eastern Kenya.

A new way of thinking This study reflects emerging awareness of the need to see disasters as primarily social, rather than natural, phenomena. Individuals and societies can act and take decisions to reduce the likelihood of a disasters occurring or, at the very least, to reduce their impacts and the levels of loss and damage associated with them. Disasters are thus no longer being perceived as ‘acts of God’ but instead as something over which humans exert influence.

Community-Led Rangelands Assessment promotes the use of traditional or indigenous knowledge of pastoralists, as the dominant group utilizing rangelands, to guide planning and management of rangelands resources to support and build resilient pastoral livelihoods. Use of traditional knowledge is considered cheaper, easier to use and replicable. It promotes the respect of local communities’ culture and its integration into scientific methods.

This rangelands management framework is a product of a rapid pastoralist-led rangeland health assessment that was conducted in three sampled districts of Karamoja; Moroto, Napak and Kotido.

This article addresses political rights and identity among Il Chamus of Baringo District, Kenya, a small group of agro-pastoralists related to the Maasai. It discusses an important 2006 judicial ruling from the High Court of Kenya that specified a political constituency and national representation for the community, and shows how the state and its actions undermined its implementation.